Ok, so here’s my problem.
I own quite a few padded shorts, ranging from $30 - $250 (bibs), and they feel great for the first 2-3 hours, then I get really uncomfortable in them. Not pain, but quite uncomfortable.
I was able to ride 200km wearing only compression shorts with no padding, but I think I got lucky.
Regular shorts/underwear always have issues because of the seams, so they aren’t viable.
I heard that triathlon shorts are lightly padded, so they may offer a nice in-between.
Does anyone wear them? How do they compare to traditional cycling shorts?
Clothing gender, size, build? Road biking, gravel?
M, 173cm, 64kg. Long distance rides would be on a gravel bike with 32mm road tires. But I do long distance on my folding bike and 90s MTB, too. What works for one should work for all, if what I’m wearing is ideal.
I use cheap athletic shorts and a brooks saddle. I might be lucky but I’ve never had any issues besides getting holes in the shorts in over 10000km of touring.
Any underwear?
I think it’s easier to get away with casual clothes on a touring bike or at a touring pace (i.e. I never wear padded shorts when I’m on my vintage MTB set up as a touring bike), but on a road bike with road tires, the road buzz really fatigues the rear end after a while.
Yeah hanes athletic boxer briefs. I’ve tried without but that makes it too easy to accidentally squish certain parts.
I’ve never done fast paced road biking so I can’t be of help there.
It looks like Hanes has a few options where the seams aren’t over the butt cheeks. I’ll have to check them out! Thanks.
I ride regular shorts on longer rides and trips, i have a couple of the super cheap nh100 shorts from decathlon, and some icebreaker merino boxers, not having any issues with seams.
nh100 shorts from decathlon
Those look nice, actually!
Can you quantify “longer rides”? How many KM or hours in the saddle are we talking about? For context, I’m looking for options for rides over 100km or 4h+ (up to 10h in the saddle on much longer rides.
I think they are really nice, look pretty good (better when a bit older), they’re light, kinda fast drying and 10 €. Longest ride was 250 km (all flat along a river), they’re just what i have been using for touring in the last years, so riding a lot, every day, for months.
What do you wear under them? just the icebreaker boxers?
I just haven’t had luck with shorts abd undies on long rides. They chafe no matter what style or even if I wear “anti-chafe” underwear.
And I dont sway when I pedal, so my technique should minimize that sort of thing. Like I said, I was able to get 200 km from compression shorts, but they aren’t my first choice for clothing. 😂
Yes, just the boxers, they are called “Icebreaker Anatomica Boxers”, they also only have a seam in the crack (there is a different variant of them that seems to have seams across the cheeks). I was just on a 2.5 months trip and did not use any cream or butter or whatever on my ass, just these boxers and the nh100, every day.
It works for me, maybe not for you.
Because they are wool, I won’t wear them (vegan), but I may look for something similar with seams in the crack. Most (all?) of my current boxers have seams that go over the cheeks, and that’s where most of the rubbing/chafing happens, so that might explain it!
I can’t comment directly on triatholon; but on cold weather biking I used a pair of good fitting padded motorycle pants with a pair of slippery shorts over top. The shorts took care of friction, and the leather and thin thin quilt of MC pants dispersed the seat pressure. Maybe a layering could help.